Mainstream schools ‘fail problem children’
The views emerged during a visit to Youthreach Galway City, which has more than 30 students taking courses including literacy and numeracy, office procedures, art and design, cookery, consumer awareness, historical studies and child development.
The Youthreach programme offers students who have dropped out or been excluded from second-level training the opportunity to allow them take on further studies or access jobs.
The parents group, which spoke to Department of Education inspectors last April, were pleased with their children’s progress at the centre and found the staff understand where the students are coming from. Some students are separated from home and family, either in residential care or homeless, and parents felt that teachers in mainstream schools need training in how to deal with sensitive issues.
“Some of the parents referred to the ‘drudgery’ of mainstream education and the inability of mainstream post-primary teachers to communicate or to connect with their children,” the inspectors wrote in a report published by the Department of Education yesterday. The parents expressed concern about the proliferation of off-licences in the Galway area and the ready availability of alcohol.
“For these parents, alcohol was one of the greatest threats to the future of their children. Managing alcohol-related issues is a source of great stress for many of them,” the report states.
The students themselves believe a lot of work needs to be done to diminish prejudices against them. The inspectors reported that principals of Galway schools rarely, if ever, visited the centre and schools appear to see the enrolment of a learner in Youthreach as the end of their responsibility.
The centre’s co-ordinator, one of its two full-time and 10 part-time staff, told the inspectors that mental health issues and behavioural problems among learners were a challenge. She also outlined difficulties faced by students accessing services in the transition between child and adult psychiatry services.
She also suggested that a two-tier system of provision is being created because of concerns that resources available to students in mainstream education are denied those in Youthreach.
In Monaghan town a report said the continuous challenge of poor attendance is linked to its location in an industrial estate a mile outside the town. The centre organises a bus to and from the town centre each morning and evening in a bid to improve attendance and punctuality, which suffer from the lack of a convenient transport service.
The reports were among more than 90 published on the Department of Education website yesterday, including whole-school and subject inspections at 15 primary schools and more than 50 second level schools.
* www.youthreach.ie
